The Kainai Nation of Alberta should demand that Harper relinquish his eagle feather. He's made it abundantly clear that he has no respect for indigenous people here or elsewhere, and his residential school apology was just political theatre for him.
The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).Armed with words, compassionate and strong words.
The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?
Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.
Adoration of Moloch permeates the country, imposing a hushed silence as he works his will. One cannot question his rites, even as the blood is gushing through the idol’s teeth. The White House spokesman invokes the silence of traditional in religious ceremony. “It is not the time” to question Moloch. No time is right for showing disrespect for Moloch.
Birth control is legal and widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it, particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills and other methods can be difficult to find in rural areas, and their cost puts them out of reach for the very poor.
. . .
The measure passed on Monday would stock government health centers, including those in remote rural areas, with free or subsidized birth control options for the poor. It would require sex education in public schools and family-planning training for community health officers. The Philippines has one of the highest birthrates in Asia, but backers of the legislation, including the Aquino administration, have said repeatedly that its purpose is not to limit to population growth. Rather, they say, the bill is meant to offer poor families the same reproductive health options that wealthier people in the country enjoy.
In the name of economic development and safe sex, the new law would require couples to have no more than two children. It would also commit the state to promoting contraceptives, abortion pills and voluntary sterilisation. In his message to Filipino Catholics, Card Tagle described as 'tragic' this morning's vote. Still, calling for unity, he said the Church would not concede defeat in its fight against the bill.
Israeli and Jewish aid officials are denying an Israeli TV report alleging that Ethiopian immigrant women have been coerced into taking contraceptive shots.
In the report, a woman identified as S. said she was told at the Jewish aid compound in Gondar, Ethiopia, “If you don’t get the shot, we won’t give you a ticket.”It seems that JDC also offers medical care once immigrants arrive in Israel, providing another er, avenue of persuasion.
She recalled, “I didn’t want to take it. They wanted me to take it. But I didn’t know it was a contraceptive,” she said. “I thought it was an immunization.”
. . .
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which runs the health clinics in Ethiopia for prospective immigrants to Israel, says it offers contraception among its array of services but that it is purely voluntary.
Several women interviewed by [documentary maker Gal] Gabbai said that they were told at the transit camps in Ethiopia that they had to receive the shots if they wanted to immigrate to Israel and continue receiving medical treatment from the JDC.But lest Israeli officials try to lay all blame on the aid group, there's this.
Israeli authorities denied all of the allegations. However, Gabbai revealed an official letter that she uncovered from the Health Ministry to Dr. Rick Hodes, the director of the JDC Medical Programs in Ethiopia. The letter praised the doctor’s work, noting that whereas fewer than 5% of Ethiopians use any form of birth control, Hodes achieved a rate of 30% among the patients he treated.I'll just let that lie there.
The birthrate among Ethiopians in Israel decreased by a dramatic 50% in the last decade, and Israeli journalist Gal Gabai wanted to know why. She investigated the issue for “Vacuum,” her documentary series on Israeli Educational Television, and she discovered some things that left her very uncomfortable — and will surely leave others equally so.Let's go back to January 2010.
Health officials in Israel are subjecting many female Ethiopian immigrants to a controversial long-term birth control drug in what Israeli women's groups allege is a racist policy to reduce the number of black babies. The contraceptive, known as Depo Provera, which is given by injection every three months, is considered by many doctors as a birth control method of last resort because of problems treating its side effects.Look how it came to light.
Women's groups were alerted to the widespread use of Depo Provera in the Ethiopian community in 2008 when Rachel Mangoli, who runs a day care centre for 120 Ethiopian children in Bnei Braq, a suburb of Tel Aviv, observed that she had received only one new child in the previous three years. "I started to think about how strange the situation was after I had to send back donated baby clothes because there was no one in the community to give them to," she said.Depo Provera is controversial? Boy howdy. It causes, among other nastinesses, osteoporosis.
She approached a local health clinic serving the 55 Ethiopian families in Bnei Braq and was told by the clinic manager that they had been instructed to administer Depo Provera injections to the women of child-bearing age, though he refused to say who had issued the order. Ms Mangoli, who interviewed the women, said: "They had not been told about alternative forms of contraception or about the side effects or given medical follow-ups." The women complained of a wide range of side effects associated with the drug, including headaches, abdominal pain, fatigue, nausea, loss of libido and general burning sensations.
Some of the women interviewed said they were told that birth control pills were not suitable for them because they were not capable of remembering to take them daily. Video shot with a hidden camera during an Israeli health clinic visit by an Ethiopian immigrant, during which she gets a Depo-Provera shot, indeed documents healthcare providers expressing this exact opinion of Ethiopian women.From the 2010 story:
Figures show that 57 per cent of Depo Provera users in Israel are Ethiopian, even though the community accounts for less than two per cent of the total population. About 90,000 Ethiopians have been brought to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has subsequently been questioned by some rabbis and is doubted by many ordinary Israelis.That percentage is kind of amazing, isn't it?
This policy appears to conflict with the stated goals of the country's Demography Council, a group of experts charged with devising ways to persuade Jewish women to have more babies. The council was established in response to what is widely seen in Israel as a "demographic war" with Palestinians, or the need to maintain a Jewish majority in the region despite high Palestinian birth rates. In a speech marking the council's reconvening in 2002, the then social welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri, referred to "the beauty of the Jewish family that is blessed with many children".
Yali Hashash, a researcher at Haifa University, said attempts to restrict Ethiopian women's fertility echoed practices used against Jewish women who immigrated to Israel from such Arab countries as Iraq, Yemen and Morocco in the state's early years, in the 1950s and 1960s. Many, she said, had been encouraged to fit IUDs when the device was still experimental because Israel's leading gynecologists regarded Arab Jews as "primitive" and incapable of acting "responsibly".
“Canada and Israel share a bond of friendship and are allies in the democratic family of countries,” International Development Minister Julian Fantino said in a statement released by Israel’s embassy in Ottawa.Wonder if Canada also supports coerced contraception for *some* Israelis?
Mr. Van Loan obtained a master of science degree in planning and a master of arts in international relations from the University of Toronto and a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School.
[Raitt] is a graduate of St. Francis Xavier University and holds a master of science degree from the University of Guelph. She earned her law degree from Osgoode Hall at York University.Master of SCIENCE!!
Dr. Goodyear attended the University of Waterloo specializing in kinesiology and psychology before graduating from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.
He graduated from Brother Rice High School in St. John’s and pursued studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland.And Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.
Mr. Kenney is a graduate of Notre Dame College. He also studied at the St. Ignatius Institute of the University of San Francisco.
In 2011, about 53% of Canadians aged 15 and over had trade certificates, college diplomas and university degrees. This was an increase of 20 percentage points since 1990.That's pretty impressive, isn't it? In fact, Canada has the highest percentage of such graduates of any of the OECD countries.
Vermont, which may be the most liberal state in the union, nevertheless is the only state that allows its residents to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.OK, so I'm Canadian and therefore able to believe just about anything about nutty Merkins. But Vermont? REGISTERING non—gun-owners? And I couldn't find any other legit source for the story.
Go figure.
I’m sure this logic wouldn’t fly in the Ithaca area, but Vermont State Rep. Fred Maslack is proposing that the state not only register non-gun owners but also charge them for not having a gun.
Yup, under Maslack’s proposal Vermont would become the first state to require a permit for the luxury of traipsing about unarmed and assess a fee of $500 for the privilege of not owning a gun.
It seems that Maslack reads the “militia” phrase of the Second Amendment as not only the right of the individual citizen to bear arms, but as ‘a clear mandate to do so.’ He believes that universal gun ownership was advocated by the framers of the Constitution as an antidote to a “monopoly of force” by the government as well as criminals.
He contends that Vermont’s constitution states explicitly that “the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State” and those persons who are “conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms” shall be required to “pay such equivalent.”
Under the bill, adults who choose not to own a firearm would be required to register their name, address, Social Security number, and driver’s license number with the state.
“There is a legitimate government interest in knowing who is not prepared to defend the state should they be asked to do so,” Maslack told the Associated Press.
Vermont has one of the highest gun ownership rates per capita of any state in the country and its crime rate is third lowest in the nation.
Think about it. There is no reason why gun owners should have to pay taxes to support police protection for people who choose not to protect themselves. Why not let them contribute their fair share and pay their own way. Isn’t that reasonable? Non-gun owners require more police to protect them and this fee should go to paying for their defense.
Right?
No, I didn’t think so. Makes too much sense.
Usually, I have been against the government ruling anything has to be mandatory. But given the fact that Obamacare not only passed but was affirmed by the Supreme Court, I guess the new law of the land allows the government to force people to buy things. While it may not be right, as of now it is legal, so why not force people (who are not otherwise barred from owning firearms) to exercise their rights and those persons who are “conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms” shall be required to “pay such equivalent”?Still looking for 'mandatory gun ownership', I found this about a similar proposal in South Dakota from February 2011.
I mean, there is no reason why gun owners should have to pay taxes to support police protection for people who choose not to protect themselves. Why not let them contribute their fair share and pay their own way. Isn’t that reasonable? Non-gun owners require more police to protect them and this fee should go to paying for their defense.
If, as a healthy person, I have to foot the bill for the chain smoking, burger inhaling, cardio hating, Fatty McFattensteins of America, why shouldn’t someone who wants to pass the responsibility of their own protection onto the cops pay for that privilege?
Do I expect this legislation in Vermont to go anywhere? I’m not sure. When similar bills have come up before in Vermont they haven’t gotten any traction but ever since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Obamacare who knows.
If the long lasting effect of Obamacare (besides crippling the health industry) is that mandatory gun ownership legislation sweeps the nation then I will laugh long and hard. Gotta love karma.
While some Americans would think the law was a damn fine thing, it turns out [Sioux Fall representative Hal Wick] himself has only advanced the law to highlight what he sees as the injustice of the Obama Administration's healthcare bill.Makes total sense, eh? Mandatory health care, mandatory gun ownership. (Although in saner societies, one would think the order of events might be reversed.)
In other words, in this 2008 post, Stephen Mosher wants doctors to be able to know which bleeding women to turn away (to die in agony in the gutter?), and which not. Men may be tried in courts, women in clinics.
- As a result of years of groundwork by the abortion movement, most ministries of health in Latin America have issued regulations affirming that “attending to an incomplete abortion is not an act punishable by law.” The treatment of an incomplete abortion, these regulations say, does not "constitute abortion in penal terms.” Such regulations are perceived as falling entirely within the medical domain, and do not require any modification of the existing criminal code. They are thus extremely difficult to successfully oppose.
- Most doctors in Latin America object to performing abortions on conscience grounds, but these chemical abortions, as we call them, neutralize the conscience objection. Physicians are seen as having a duty to care for women suffering from miscarriages, or even from incomplete abortions, because the life of the mother is at risk. Were they to refuse to care for a woman hemorrhaging — even if they were certain that the woman had deliberately caused the hemorrhaging by taking Misoprostol — they could be sanctioned by the local medical board.
Warawa wants Parliament to "condemn this worst form of discrimination against females," which he calls "gender violence -- gendercide."Arthur included this dandy link to facts on gender preference in the US.
But women are the ones having sex-selection abortions, which means Warawa is accusing women of violence and gendercide -- and courtesy of MP Stella Ambler -- "atrocities." Ending discrimination against women does not start with making nasty accusations against them. Yes, sex selection can be a sexist act, but it's nonsensical to protect women from discrimination by restricting their rights. In India, laws against sex-selection abortion cause women to resort to unsafe and illegal abortion to avoid having a girl, and some may even face abuse and violence from their families if they bear a girl.
The question is why do men and women have these preferences? The researchers hypothesize that men favour boys for much the same reason that women favour girls—because human beings often project their own dreams on their children and those dreams often come with stereotypical ideas of what it means to be male or female.
Moreover, the study suggests that affluent democratic societies encourage women to favour daughters more than those societies where opportunities for women are circumscribed by discrimination and inequality. Seen in that light, women preferring daughters over sons is a sign of progress.Makes total sense, eh? When girls have the same opportunities as boys, there's little downside to letting nature take its course.
The calculations show the total number of “missing” girls is 245, which equals about 35 births per year, or less than one per cent of the total births to Indian-born women.Note that the study was conducted with data only from Indian-born women living in Canada.
Dr. [Prabhat Jha, chair in disease control at the University of Toronto and director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s Hospital] said in an e-mail if sex-selective abortion is at play, it is a very small problem and other “important but subtle biases,” such as migration of Indian women about to give birth to a son, could help explain the trend.
